What type of music are you playing? I too have noticed the scratching on my laptop with an ESS Maestro 2 sound chip, but only when playing MP3 files, I don't hear this when I play CD's, and I don't hear it when I play MP3's on my desktop with a Soundblaster card. If, in fact, we are talking about the same "scratching" sound, I doubt if it's your hardware, it is more likely the driver. This is a relatively new chip and the driver I have for it is a beta version; I don't even know if there is an officially supported Linux driver for it.
--Greg
